4QD-TECCircuits Archive

There have been many times when I've been designing machinery controls
where I have needed a logic function but only one so it's not worth
using a quad logic gate. Here are some of the ways I use. Look
carefully at them and you may gain a new perspective on logic and truth
tables!

The first thing that may strike you are that the circuits are all in
pairs (except for the EXOR functions). The funny thing is that the
pairs are pretty nearly identical. The NAND gate is exactly the same
configuration as the NOR function! The same for the other pairs.

Don't tell me you thought NAND was a different function from NOR!
Have a look at these circuits: the pairs work in exactly the same way,
except that one uses a positive logic and the other a negative logic!

The pairs are exactly the same - if you invert all polarities. I'll
bet this is something they didn't teach you in college!

Of course there are limitations to these circuits: in a lot of them
the output is high in the appropriate circumstances, but not as high as
the inputs. They are lossy, so you cannot go stacking them instead of
IC logic.

You can't expect to mix them with TTL logic either, because diodes
drop 1/2 volt so they will degrade the noise immunity.